Naval battle exercises involve shipborne weapons and floating targets to be hit by gunfire. It is often desired that the targets simulate the size and/or movement of boats and other floating objects. A problem associated with such targets is that they must often be large in size, which makes providing a large number of “hard targets” impractical. To address this, it is common practice to provide buoyant, inflatable and collapsible structures for targets. Such targets can be folded to a relatively small size so that many can be stored and quickly inflated to full size on the water.
Buoyant and inflatable targets, however, are susceptible water currents and waves, and more particularly to the wind, also known as set and drift, which cause the targets to move in a manner that does not properly simulate movements of a true battle target. Anchors or drogue chutes are often added to the targets to prevent or inhibit excessive movement. Many conventional drogue chutes cannot be emptied to permit convenient target recovery. Proper sea anchors take time and experience to rig and launch, and the anchor line and commercial sea anchors cost money. Many times a makeshift sea anchor is improperly rigged using a weighted ammunition shell casing or ammunition box full of scrap metal. These types of sea anchors drop directly below the target balloon and exert too much resistance in heavy seas, resulting in damage to the target balloon before it can serve its intended purpose.
Increasingly, gunnery exercises involve the use of radar to sight in gunnery radar, thereby raising the need for an inflatable target with enhanced radar reflectivity. Prior attempts to increase radar reflectivity included mixing metal shavings with a viscous liquid, such as oil, and pouring the mixture inside the inflated target. A problem with this approach is that the metal shavings can provide insufficient reflectivity, especially when the shavings settle to the bottom of the target over time. Metallic sheet materials have also been attached on the exterior of an inflatable target to increase radar reflectivity. A problem with this approach is that the metallic material, due to its electrical conductive properties, could present an electrical hazard during deployment and/or retrieval of the target on the deck of a ship. Other approaches involving metal plates have the disadvantage of puncturing the inflatable target and making the target top heavy or unwieldy during deployment and retrieval of the target.
Accordingly, there is a continuing need for an inflatable floating target that closely simulates the movement of a body of substantial mass and stability so as to establish a more accurate test of a trainee's gunnery skills, maintains a generally upright orientation, and which has enhanced radar reflectivity.
Radar reflective targets are used to sight in and reconcile the accuracy of a ship's gunnery radar. Accuracy must be validated to insure that calibration is correct. To do this, one needs to fire weapons using the radar.